'90s for me. The golden era of JRPGs. Game developers coming to grips with 3D technology and 3D game design. The 3D stealth genre being born (?) with the Thief/Tenchu/Metal Gear Solid trio in 1998. The potential of video games to deliver stories of cinematic quality being revealed with MGS and others. The survival horror being popularized with Resident Evil, and then improved on (in my opinion) with Silent Hill. We saw the racing sim going mainstream and selling like hot cakes with Gran Turismo, with the more arcadey experience of Need for Speed kinda rivaling it.

On the PC, we saw the rise of the FPS genre, that of the RTS genre, and of online multiplayer matches as the Internet became more and more popular, along with great CRPG classics being released right and left.

On the Nintendo side of things, the entire lifespan of the SNES which was "the" console to be had in its time, dominating the market on account of its games and not its hardware. We saw the Game Boy and the whole Pokémon phenomenon. We saw the N64 with classics like Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, Conker's Bad Fur Day, well, you Nintendo folks name it.

As far as Sega goes, I can't name much on the Genesis, despite having had one, but I do distinctly and dearly remember Sonic 2, Gunstar Heroes, Shinobi III. Then the Saturn came along and got overshadowed by the PlayStation, yet it still rode the same wave of a 3D graphics revolution. The Dreamcast, the swansong of Sega's console-making efforts, pioneered (perhaps too early) the next big leap in the 3D revolution that would continue in the next decade, with impressive-looking games, especially the absolute classic that is Shenmue.

Now, I know the 6th generation and the '00s did fantastic leaps to both game design quality and graphics in comparison to the 5th, with stuff like MGS2 and Gran Turismo 3 particularly sticking out in my memory, but allow me to look at the '90s with my comfortable nostalgia glasses. The late '00s also saw the rise of the gritty brown/yellow modern military first-person shooter with regenerating health, which remained a standard many tried to clone in the years to come, saturating the market. They also saw the rise of the DLC (horse armor, anyone?) and of games being launched unfinished. I particularly think the advent of online features to consoles hurt the experience around them, a statement to which many Xbox people might feel inclined to object.

I don't know much about the '80s, I hear Nintendo "saved" video games with the NES' popularity after the crash in '83, followed/accompanied by Sega I guess. I feel this suspicion that many might look at those days with even comfier "different times" nostalgia goggles than I do the '90s. Something I'm pretty sure of is it was something of a great time for owning personal computers that came with BASIC interpreters and manuals for programming them and whatnot, every now and then you hear about some successful programmer who started making his/her own games on the Apple II or Commodore 64 as a kid.

Sorry for writing this much, just got thinking too much about the topic.